FIVE HANDS by Jo Ball
On the street a skeletal dog upturned a bucket in its effort to find a morsel. The dog ran off yelping with its tail between its legs, as dog do if they are guilty or innocent of wrongdoing. An orange flushed from the bucket was rolling toward the gutter.
A girl in a green dress put her foot out quickly. She bent and grasped the fruit. Curiosity caused her to catch this wonderful thing: the brightness of it when it caught the sun waylaid fear. Someone watched from behind the edge of the stone building. His hat jutted out, a torn brim, a grimy twisted section of band - the hat was the watcher's only joy. There were few men's hats left in Warsaw. He could feel the saliva beginning to slip from the cracks in the conrners of his mouth and he put up his hand to wipe it. As he did, the girl raised her head and looked directly at him. Fear flew into her eyes. She had forgotten to keep her head up, to be alert to trouble on the street, but then she was young - she had never seen an orange until now - and she dropped ita as she ran without a sound, to disappear into a laneway.
Behind her, the man had immediately sprung upon the orange, too hungry at last to forget who might be watching. A shot rang out. The man in the hat jerked backward with the orange clutched in both hands hard to his chest, and then he tumbled sprawling to the footpath, silently. His fingers opened. The orange rolled to the edge of the gutter.
A soldier in a dirty uniform limped to the gutter. He cradled his rifle in the crook of his arm as he bent to pick up the orange. He smiled, he smelled it, his dark eyes closing in ecstasy, head inclined back as if that enabled the sweet citrus perfume to travel more easily to his brain.
He was not aware that someone was watching. Someone who had seen him shoot the man in the hat. His eyes were on the fruit, nothing else existed.
The soldier put the rifle on the ground and remained squatting as he attempted to peel the orange. But his nails were broken and sore, the flesh reddened and infected. He picked up his rifle, balancing it on his knees as he knelt. He would use the tip of the bayonet to cut his piece of fruit.
Hunger had, at last, made him forget to see who was watching. His eyes were on the fruit, nothing else existed.
Just then a great stone whistled through the air from the same side of the street where he had hidden. The whip of the missile's firing pouch made a cracking echo in the alley where the soldier had waited. He would spy no more, he would cut no more. The stone opened the back of his head and he fell forward. He did not move. It was a clean kill. The orange slid from his body to the road.
It did not roll. Someone was approaching stealthily. Someone who bent, picked up the fruit, wiped it lovingly with a rag scrap, put it in the pocket of her green dress, and returned to the spot where she had been only six minutes ago when she dared to pick up an orange.
She knew now what it was. Her grandmother was waiting for her at home so that they could have a rare feast.
